Ben has been bugging us for a Chuck-e-Cheese birthday since one of his little friends had a party there last year. And I mean last March, March 2006. 
We’ve been discussing this party for months, and as I mentioned in the post below, Marti and I decided we would do it, but that we would not do it and buy gifts. Luckily Ben got enough gifts from family and friends that he was satisfied with the two used items we gave him (okay, and I broke down and spent $10 in the dollar aisle at Target). We also got him a cool Lightning McQueen cake. Cool, that is, until Mater “towed” it.
I call Chuck-e-Cheese “Las Vegas for Kids” and it truly is.
I had never seen the inside of a Chuck-e-Cheese until the now infamous party last year, and I was pretty overwhelmed. Shell-shocked, to be exact, because there is noise! and games! and more noise! and scary, plastic, life-sized dolls that sing bad 70s songs. And did I mention the noise? 
The kids, of course, absolutely love it. They eat it up. And, because of the security system they have set up there, you can mostly let the kids run free. They have those germ-filled hamster tunnels all over and Ben spent an hour and a half in them. Yes, ninety full minutes crawling through those tunnels. Luckily the germs have a lot of competition and he doesn’t seem to have anything flesh-eating. So far.
Chuckie himself comes out and does a routine with the kids and they march around the area in a big mamba line and then everyone dances and screams a lot. And screams with the screaming. And then we scream Happy Birthday, and the parents retire to the back bathroom to furtively drink a lot of tequila, possibly with a shot of morphine and an anti-depressant.
All that being said, we were all exhausted and a little ill from eating cake and bad, expensive pizza, but everyone seemed to have fun. Even Maya.
We’ve safely made it through another birthday. Onward and downward…
Leave a Reply